The evil brother that is corporate law

Trenz Pruca of the Daily Kos community discussed capitalism and democracy in four posts. Sources are included in each post. In the first he described the life cycle of capitalism. Stage 1 is production and competition featuring small firms. There are inventors and hungry upstarts. Stage 2 is consolidation in which firms swallow competitors and acquire political power. Stage 3 is financialization in which speculation replaces production, which becomes optional. Finance is sacred. Factories collapse and no one notices. A bank sneezes and Congress has billions in bailout. Stage 4 is oligarchic management in which wealth concentrates and the state guarantees elite losses and protects elite profits. What Adam Smith praised was stage 1. He would be appalled at stages 3 and 4. It is a historical pattern that Venice, Netherlands, and Britain followed. Corporations are not capitalism. They were invented to encourage risk through limited liability. Ownership is diffuse among passive shareholders leaving decisions to executives, fund managers, and lobbyists. The value shifts from product to stock price. More money can be made trading assets than producing goods. Capitalism isn’t broken, but complete. There are ways out of this, but they will be painful. Capitalism is a brand. It describes itself as stage 1 so as to protect the wealth that accumulates in stage 4. In the second part Pruca describes a way out, which is democratic socialism. First we have to get an accurate view of socialism, beyond what Republicans say it is so they can discredit it. Democratic socialism is practiced in the Scandinavian countries. It keeps markets, private firms, and competition. It adds, universal services, strong worker power, government that regulates capitalism, public or cooperative ownership of essential sectors, and political equity so government can’t be bought. Democracy is the steering wheel to capitalism or can be seen as capitalism with guardrails. This creates broad ownership rather than concentrated. Businesses can fail without wrecking society. There are strong unions and collective bargaining. There is confusion because people often confuse “capitalism” with “big business” and “socialism” with “government doing everything.” Pruca wrote:

The defining difference between late-stage capitalism and democratic socialism is not markets. It is power. Who controls the surplus? Who sets the rules? Who captures the gains? Who bears the risks? Who writes the laws? Who funds the political class? Who can be allowed to fail without destroying society? Late-stage capitalism answers: capital. Democratic socialism answers: citizens. Everything else follows.

Oligarchy is not fate. In the third part Pruca sorts through definitions. Some people describe stage 1 as capitalism, others describe stage 4 and use the same term. The two groups talk past each other and the rich and policymakers exploit the confusion. We need to define capitalism not as a fixed idea, but a historical lifecycle system. That allows us to criticize capitalism without rejecting markets. If capitalism is a fixed idea than taxing capital is attacking capitalism. Regulations, union rights, and anti-corruption laws are then socialism. But if capitalism is a historical system that can degrade into oligarchy then taxing capital, regulation, and all the rest are maintenance, keeping the system for eating itself.

Capitalism does not just create wealth. It creates the conditions by which wealth governs unless democratically constrained. ... If capitalism is seen as historically self-transforming, reform becomes essential to prevent decay.

Democratic socialism does not mean the government owns everything and there is bureaucratic central planning. That’s state socialism, which is different. Democratic socialism prizes the democracy and provides the guardrails to capitalism. We’re used to thinking about state socialism because of WWII and Cold War language. We’re used to socialism being a synonym for authoritarianism. We’re taught capitalism is freedom, regulation as socialism, and equality as tyranny. In summary: Capitalism is a historical system and will evolve into oligarchy unless democracy intervenes. Policy depends on accurate definitions and descriptions and America’s political paralysis is a result of linguistic confusion (which is made worse by those in power). We can’t get a better system until we accurately describe this one. In the fourth part Pruca clarifies the problem isn’t corporations, it is the evil brother that is corporate law. Corporations derive their power not from capitalism but from law. Georgetown historian Carroll Quigley argued:

Without public control over corporate personhood, corporate lifespan, and corporate liability, no society can remain fair, democratic, or functional.

Early American corporations were not all powerful. They were:

granted charters sparingly, limited to specific purposes, barred from owning other corporations, subject to periodic re-approval, restricted in asset accumulation, constrained in stock issuance, and limited in voting rights so no shareholder could dominate.

These rules were pro-democracy. The idea of corporate personhood does not appear in a law or court opinion. It does appear as a headnote by a court reporter in 1886. States had a race to the bottom and Delaware won that race. I had read elsewhere that corporations went to various state legislatures, no doubt with money and promise of jobs, asking them to loosen state corporate laws. That’s why most corporations are registered in Delaware and the state as a separate corporate judicial system. This is another example of the actions of the social hierarchy. Get a bit wealthier than others and one has money to meddle in politics to make wealth accumulation a bit easier. A bit more wealth, a bit more meddling. The cycle can continue. Back to Pruca. That meddling meant corporations became immortal. No limit on purpose or consolidation, no obligation to the public. They switched from being economic tools to sovereign entities. But capitalism can work just fine with all the smaller corporations. With the immortal corporations...

attempts to raise wages are blunted by corporate pressure, attempts to regulate are captured by corporate lobbyists, attempts to tax are negotiated like hostage situations, and attempts to provide public goods are undermined by private interests.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has introduced the Accountable Capitalism Act. Its components. Corporations with more than $1 billion in revenue need a federal charter. It must consider the interests of not just stakeholders, but workers, customers and communities. At least 40% of board seats are elected by employees. There are limits on political spending (I would prefer none). Executives can be held accountable. Other ideas out there: Corporate personhood leads to corruption. Anti-trust is a tool to preserve democracy. Democracy can’t exist with private empires. Liability rules should scale to corporate impact. One corporation can’t own another. Transparency in risk, taxes, and supply chains. Quigley said:

The danger isn’t “the market” — it’s the corporation that has stepped outside both market discipline and democratic authority.

Pruca says that corporations must be subject to national review because corporations operate nationally and internationally, states don’t have the capacity to regulate them, and a corporate failure can crash the economy. The question isn’t whether capitalism is good or bad. It is: Who rules whom? Pruca’s answer:

Any institution that enjoys the privileges of personhood, immortality, limited liability, and political power must be subject to the nation’s democratic authority, No exceptions. ... Wealth, power, and economic activity must operate within democratic boundaries, not outside them.

As I wrote all that I got to be thinking of the Robber Barons of the late 1800s. They sound like late-stage capitalism. I don’t remember, if I learned at all, how they were defeated.

The Constitution was written to frustrate ambition

Jasciu of the Daily Kos community started a post with:

For nearly two and a half centuries, the American experiment has endured by virtue of its capacity to restrain power. The Constitution was less a blueprint for efficiency than for frustration: ambition checking ambition, institutions restraining one another, power fractured and parceled out to preserve liberty. Yet over the last century, one of the most profound threats to this equilibrium has crept in largely unchallenged. Two entities—the political party and the modern corporation—have come to wield a quiet dominance over the electoral system, the judiciary, and the regulatory state, placing organized selfish power at the very heart of our republic.

They propose an amendment to the US Constitution to remedy the problem. I won’t quote the whole text, but here are the main points. No political party shall administer elections. Elections shall be conducted by nonpartisan bodies. No political party shall control or influence the nomination of judges. [Michigan Supreme Court justices are nominated by the parties, then run as “nonpartisan.”] Corporations are not persons with political rights. They shall not finance elections. Corporations shall not have control over regulatory agencies. The author does recognize the difficulty, close to impossibility, of getting this amendment approved in the current political climate. Commenters added other needed amendments or sections of broader amendments. From iyouwemeus: A corporation shall not be equated with a natural person or citizen. Money shall not be considered speech. Money to influence any part of government shall be transparent and controlled by law. A corporation owning more than one type of media outlet shall provide balanced and truthful news and free political advertising. Bots generated by AI shall not be equated to a natural person and shall be identified. From btfjd: Abolish the filibuster. Increase the size of the Supreme Court. From dfhamel: The filibuster must be active – a senator actually talking on the Senate floor. Rules for the House that don’t change when the party in power changes. Supreme Court Justices, Department of Justice leadership, and FBI leadership must be independent from the president. Instead of appointed by the president they should voted on by the people after a vigorous vetting system. I would add more: Congressional and state legislature districts shall be drawn by citizen redistricting commissions representing the political parties and citizen diversity. The right to vote shall not be denied. Ryan Krugman, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Kos, wrote that there is a Make Billionaires Pay march planned for September 20 in New York City, which is during the United Nations General Assembly when many world leaders will be in town. They will be protesting more than inequality; they also have demands for climate and social justice. Billionaires are targeted because they are pushing and profiting off the climate crisis. They even profit off the people displaced by the climate crisis by those people being caught in low-wage work. They also profit by being in the detention business. The climate movement is getting good at building solidarity with other social movements. That includes being involved in the Black Lives Matter protests. In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Mike Lofgren of Salon. Here’s a bit of the quote:

If you pay attention to the details, America is rapidly transforming from a service state — one that provides education, health care, infrastructure and parks to its citizens — into a carceral state that punishes and imprisons them.

Kev added:

I’ll say it again: Trump imagined designing a wall to keep people output wall can function to keep people in as well. It’s the reason why the metaphor always seemed ominous to me.

Here’s also a portion of the quote by Lorenzo Tondo of The Guardian:

Out of the International Association of Genocide Scholars’s (IAGS) 500 members, 28% took part in the vote. Of those who voted, 86% supported the resolution. The resolution states that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in article II of the United Nations convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (1948).” ... The resolution said the IAGS recognised that “since the horrific Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, which itself constitutes international crimes”, the government of Israel had engaged in systematic and widespread crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, including indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against the civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, homes and commercial buildings, of Gaza.

From Paul Sonne of the New York Times:

Now, Mr. Putin’s fortunes have changed — and so has the world. Nowhere was that more apparent in recent days than in Tianjin, China, where leaders from member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian security grouping, met on Monday alongside heads of state from other countries. Mr. Putin used his stage to publicly blame the West for the war in Ukraine. He gleefully held hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and erupted in laughs as the pair joined in a huddle with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. Leaders from Iran, Nepal, Tajikistan, Turkey and Vietnam glad-handed Mr. Putin in private meetings that ran past midnight.[...] The elephant in the room was President Trump, who has helped end Mr. Putin’s isolation, both by welcoming him to U.S. soil for the first time in a decade and by clashing with leaders from Brazil, India and South Africa, pushing them closer to Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Modi has unraveled as New Delhi has resisted pressure from Washington to credit the U.S. leader with ending the military conflict between India and Pakistan. Mr. Trump has piled tariffs on India in response, singling out New Delhi for buying Russian oil.

In the comments is a cartoon by Bill Bramhall. It shows RFK Jr. pushing a woman off the roof of a building renamed “Department of Health and Human Sacrifices.” Chacal suggests perhaps that could be shortened to “Department of Health and Harm.” A meme posted by exlrrp and from funny snarky joke shows a perky woman holding a teacup saying in response to the nasty guy’s lack of public appearances and speculation of his health:

I can’t believe it’s already is-he-dead-yet season. I still have my holy-s***-he’s gonna-start-WWIII decorations up.

In today’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Jeff Tiedrich’s personal blog.

Let me state right up top that I didn’t believe any of this past weekend’s rumors that Dear Leader had shuffled off this mortal coil. But clearly, something is very wrong with Donny, and it’s being covered up — and because it’s this White House, staffed by the most incompetent clownf***ers ever to have f***ed clowns, it’s being covered up in the most inept manner possible.

On the same topic, in the comments exlrrp posted a meme with the words, “Have we been seeing Trump lately, or is it his doppleganger?” Beside a photo of the nasty guy is a woman with a very similar face and hair style.

Is this school better? You're not allowed to know.

I visited the Detroit Auto Show this afternoon. My purpose was to talk to representatives of the various car companies to ask if they have an electric car that meets my needs. My needs are straightforward. I want a car. Not an SUV or a truck. A car. And it doesn’t need to be very big. I want one car. I don’t have space for two. I want an electric car with a sufficient range to visit by brother on one charge. He lives about 275 miles away. The trip is short enough that I don’t want a lengthy recharging stop halfway through. Any farther than that and I’ll likely stop for a meal and could include a charge. The bad news is car companies are not there yet. The good news is they’re getting close. Several said they have vehicles with a 300 mile range or close to it. Alas, most of these vehicles are SUVs and bigger than I want and costing much more than I want to pay. Stellantis has a nice little electric car, but it gets only 150 miles on a charge. Jon Paul Sydnor is a writer for Street Prophets, a progressive Christian community on Daily Kos. He recently wrote that concepts of God matter and he proposed a progressive concept of God. The post discusses a lot of theology, most of which is of no interest to me (and likely to you). However, this is one idea that is interesting and is related to conservative Christianity.

Christian theologians, following Plato, have insisted that since only imperfect things can develop or increase, and God is perfect, God cannot develop or increase. Divine development would imply divine imperfection. ... Intentionally or accidentally, this concept of God condemns change. If God is immutable—static and unchanging—then to be static and unchanging becomes our highest ideal. If God is immutable, then by implication that which is must take priority over that which could be. All change becomes decline. Divinized immutability reinforces social rigidity, preserving entitlement and preventing reform. Such stasis was never the intention of the Hebrew prophets or Christ Jesus.

Eli Hager, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, discussed the school voucher program in Arizona. The example in the story was Title of Liberty, a private Mormon school in Mesa that went out of business. It’s source of income was voucher payments through the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. There were some reasons why this particular school failed. But there were other reasons related to the way Arizona set up their voucher program. Some of them: The law that created the ESA provided zero transparency into a school’s finances, or academic quality. Parents has no information on whether this school was better than that school (or any good at all), had a solid or shady past, and was financially healthy enough to stick around for the entirety of their child’s education. Public schools in Arizona are tightly regulated and their performance is known. That’s not true of charters. Schools that take public money yet have no public accountability is baffling to many educators and parents. The vouchers benefit the rich, who could afford the tuition anyway. They don’t benefit the poor mainly because high-quality private schools don’t exist in their neighborhoods. Parents who send their kids to private schools can speak at public school board meetings and vote in school board elections. Public school parents cannot attend the board meetings of a private school. Defenders of vouchers say the American education should be a free market of options. But if the quality of a school is a secret a parent can’t make good purchasing decisions. A parent needs quality assurance. The No Child Left Behind law, a big legislative achievement of Bush II, was big on transparency and accountability. Schools had to prove they were educating kids up to state standards. The same standards applied to schools accepting vouchers. About 2017-2020 studies “found that larger voucher programs had produced severe declines in student performance, especially in math.” The declines were blamed in part on overregulation, which prompted no regulation and secrecy. Is the school you’re considering for your child better? You’re not allowed to know. Oliver Willis of Kos discussed why Republicans are so eager to blame various people for the Los Angeles fires and their severity. Willis includes several examples of their accusations. Their tirades aren’t just about the fire and they’re not new. California is frequently targeted because it is highly Democratic.

Over the decades, conservative politicians and right-wing media have frequently used California as subject of scorn and derision because of the state’s liberal politics. California has embraced many progressive policies on the environment, gender equality, LGBTQ+ equality, and racial equality, while also being the home to the entertainment industry and much of the tech industry. When something bad happens in California, conservatives flock to the issue to use it as “proof” that liberalism and the Democratic Party are also bad.

In the case of the fires the severity can partly be blamed on conservatism and their climate change denial. Willis also reported that this time Republicans aren’t content to lay blame. They’re now talking about politicizing the fires. There is talk to link relief funds to a plan to raise the federal debt limit. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. With the way the government is spending money (to soon be made worse by renewing tax cuts) the debt limit has to be raised. Not doing so means a government shutdown. Also, because of the House Freedom Caucus Republicans on their own don’t have enough votes to raise the limit. So enticing Democrats to vote for the increase by throwing in wildfire aid might be good. But it is also bad because it sets a precedent. If done once there will be a next time. And next time the pairing may not be with raising the debt limit, but with such things as tax cuts for the rich, or efforts to remove LGBTQ books from school libraries, or authorization to invade Greenland. I also remember that a big reason why the nasty guy wants the debt ceiling raised is so he can extend tax cuts to billionaires. That’s bad. But he is going to do that anyway. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Edward Helmore of The Guardian:

The politicization of the Los Angeles fires could be showing signs of intensifying. To opposing political factions, the ruin of parts of Los Angeles offers an inviting but deadly tableau on which to lay out their contrary agendas. To Democrats, the intensity with which the fires took hold, propelled by the late-season Santa Ana winds, is evidence of climate change that some Republicans deny as a political hoax. To some Republicans, including Trump, the fires are evidence of mismanagement under Democrats’ racial- and gender-equity drives. ... Warren Davidson, an Ohio representative, called on Friday for federal disaster relief to be withheld from California unless the state reforms its forestry management practices.

And from Parker Malloy of The New Republic:

The same people who spent years telling us climate change isn’t real are now trying to blame the fires on the fact that the L.A. Fire Department’s chief is a woman. Never mind that Kristin Crowley worked her way up through the ranks for 22 years. Never mind that the department’s leadership is still predominantly male. The right has found a way to combine their favorite bogeymen: diversity initiatives, California governance, and climate science. ... This is the playbook we’re going to see for every climate disaster going forward. Rather than acknowledge the role of climate change, rather than have honest discussions about infrastructure and emergency preparedness, the right will search for ways to blame their cultural grievances. Everything becomes evidence of their preferred narrative: Hydrant failures become proof of Democratic mismanagement, female leadership becomes proof of “woke” politics gone wrong, and the actual causes get buried under an avalanche of manufactured outrage.

In the comments of a second pundit roundup is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich. It shows a person at the base of a devastated hillside crawling for help. A person labeled “GOP” says, “You want aid? Put on this MAGA cap.” And exlrrp posted a meme:

Over a MILLION acres of wildfires in Texas last year. Funny that it wasn’t blamed on poor water resource management, black or female firefighters or [Gov.] Greg f---ing Abbott.

Rating news on its politics instead of its facts

I finished the book The Great Passion by James Runcie. The story is set in Saxony of 1726. The narrator is thirteen year old Stefan Silbermann. His mother has died and his father sends him to Leipzig to the St. Thomas Church and School where he can study music with the Cantor – Johann Sebastian Bach. I saw Stefan’s last name and wondered... My thought that he was a part of the Silbermann pipe organ building family of that time in Saxony was quickly confirmed. Bach knew and tested organs in the area and would have played Silbermann organs and consulted with the builder. Stefan is the nephew of the master builder, though is actually fictional. Bach, of course, is historical as are many events in the story, though details would not have been recorded. One main purpose of the school was to teach the boys singing so they could sing in the church services. The voices of most of the boys hadn’t changed yet so they could sing the soprano and alto parts. This was necessary because women were banned from singing in the church at the time. Several of the boys knew their usefulness to the school would end when their voice changed. When Stefan gets to the school he is bullied, as many boys new to a situation are. Part of the bullying is because Bach recognizes how well Stefan sings and asks him to sing solos, to the annoyance of the boy who had been getting most of the solos. So Bach invites Stefan to leave the dormitory and move into his family quarters provided by the church. There Stefan gets to know Bach’s seven living children and experiences puppy love with the oldest, seventeen year old Catharina. As part of living in the household Stefan serves as a copyist as Bach must prepare a new cantata nearly every week. Stefan takes organ lessons from Bach and singing lessons from Bach’s second wife Anna Magdalena. Most of the book is scenes of domestic, school, and church life. Not a lot happens. There is a lot of talk of theology and much of it is of the sort that life is hard and miserable but heaven will be glorious. Death is common and you will die too. So don’t be idle. Yeah, gloomy theology. Bach is a strong task master, wanting to be busy and wanting his children to always be productive. The commonness of death is shown in Bach’s own family. The book describes some of it and I consulted a Bach genealogy for more. By the time of the story Bach and first wife Maria Barbara had seven children and only four were still alive. Maria Barbara had also died. Anna Magdalena eventually gave birth to thirteen children, giving Bach a total of twenty – the last when she was 41 and he was 57. Eleven of those twenty died before he did in 1750 at age 65. The last 20% of the book is what gives it its name. At the start of Lent of 1727 Bach has the idea of a big Passion cantata to be given on Good Friday, the day that marks the crucifixion of Jesus. He doesn’t want to just tell the story. He wants the text to comment on the story, to draw the listener in and make them feel they could have been a part of it. The result is The Passion of Christ According to the Evangelist Matthew. So there is a rush to get such a huge piece written. Then get it rehearsed. That includes teaching the soloists (including Stefan), convincing them they are capable of meeting the demands of the music, and telling one that a recent death is all the more appropriate for them to sing this piece about death. If one is really into Bach this is an enjoyable story. Mark Sumner, Daily Kos staff emeritus, discussed the decision of Los Angeles Times billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Schiong to give stories a “bias meter,” a way “to alert readers about the ideological tilt of the paper’s content.” The rankings could be from “far left” to “far right.” What could go wrong? Sumner says plenty. The rankings would be done by AI. There isn’t an existing AI that could provide such ratings. So the first problem is that Soon-Schiong is adapting the medical AI he’s already created. Current AIs can be bad at their tasks and offer no explanation on how they arrive at their outputs. Sumner reviews two problems that appeared in medical AIs. First, one AI determined which skin lesions were cancerous by determining that physicians held rulers next to the cancerous ones. Second, an AI determined which x-rays showed tuberculosis from how out of focus they were. Tuberculosis is thankfully rare these days, so the only x-rays that showed it were older, more out of focus ones. So, how would such an AI rate a story on climate change? Far-right sources don’t use the term and pretend it doesn’t exist. A factual, well-researched story on climate change will be labeled “far-left.” Public Enlightenment wrote about how unhelpful a bias meter would be by showing how some outlets are ranked by various services. Associated Press – “far left,” Fox News – “center right,” Reason Magazine, supported by the Koch Brothers – “center.” Public Enlightenment adds, “Ratings do not reflect accuracy or credibility; they reflect perspective only.” And that gets to the core of the problem. Wrote Sumner.

Only pure ignorance will make it through as unaligned. For large sections of the Times' audience, any stamp that indicates a story is left or right will be tantamount to saying "This is inaccurate, so don't bother to read it." What Patrick Soon-Shiong is creating is a system that tells his readers that the content of the paper he owns can't be relied on for accuracy. It's hard to imagine any way to more quickly delegitimize and decimate journalism. Which may, of course, be the intent. ... Any ranking service that examines articles on a political rather than factual basis is inherently harmful to independent, unbiased journalism. And every one of these bias charts seems to start with a huge bias.

Oliver Willis of Kos wrote:

“There is talk about the Postal Service being taken private, you do know that—not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” Trump said at a press conference on Monday. “It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time. We’re looking at that.”

My thought in reading that paragraph is who are those “a lot of people”? They certainly aren’t the vast majority of Americans. But we know the nasty guy doesn’t listen to us common folks that make up the vast majority of Americans. He listens to billionaires who either want to get richer off the USPS or don’t want it as competition. Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union said privatization would “end universal service.” People in hard to reach locations would lose service. Many people, especially us in the ’burbs, don’t know that many of the big package delivery companies use the USPS for those hard to reach locations, the places the USPS must go by law, but for-profit companies would see as too expensive.

“Universal service is especially important to rural America. Privatization also would lead to price-gouging by private companies,” Dimondstein added.

Put another way, the nasty guy and his cronies would not see any change in service. Their political base would. A reminder: Louis DeStroy is still in charge of the USPS. Biden didn’t accomplish his removal. Alex Samuels of Kos wrote that American voters can be quite messy in their opinion on big issues. This assertion is based on a Civiqs poll for Kos done December 7-10. It shows views don’t align with the goals of either party. Some of the messiness: 94% of Republicans believe the nasty guy will act on his promise to deport millions of immigrants. But only 50% of Republicans believe he’ll end the Affordable Care Act. Voter preference? A belief that the federal government has a responsibility in health care coverage? In 2024 Missouri voters approved abortion rights, raise the minimum wage, and paid sick leave while voting in Republicans, who oppose these policies. The messiness could be perpetual dissatisfaction with both parties. Or liking Democratic policies and not their candidates this year. Or trying to compress incoherent views into a binary choice. Two weeks ago Samuels reported that based on the election results many pundits are making the claim America has shifted to the right. But based on actual policies America is still quite liberal. One example is that 71% of Americans want the government to lower drug costs and prevent price gouging. Also two weeks ago Samuels reported:

In fact, according to a survey from YouGov, which was fielded in late November, the majority of Americans surveyed said that they view allegations of sexual assault (62%), domestic violence (61%), and a history of substance abuse (51%) as disqualifying to serve in a presidential Cabinet position. American adults also suggested that they didn’t want Cabinet picks who had links to extremist groups (70%), allegations of links to hostile foreign governments (66%), and past criminal convictions (61%). These numbers might not dissuade Trump, however, who is actively rolling out new names for those who he wants to fill out his administration. Several of Trump’s picks are embroiled in controversy. And it’s possible that Trump is hoping that Americans will turn a blind eye to these lower-level Cabinet members.

Samuels then reviewed all the cabinet nominations a majority of Americans view as disqualifying. Again, two weeks ago (yeah, I didn’t do much writing early this month) Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, wrote that the SPLC is closely monitoring the cabinet nominations and why the choice matters.

A strong federal government is essential to ensuring that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are both protected and applied equally to all Americans and to providing vital resources and services to the most vulnerable populations. In arenas such as housing, education, criminal justice, health care, and more, civil rights laws protect against discrimination and ensure equal opportunity. However, we are concerned that the incoming administration will seek to shift power to individual states and abandon the federal government’s responsibilities to protect everyone’s rights.

Lisa Needham of Kos reported that last week “Texas sued New York physician Margaret Daley Carpenter for providing abortion pills via telehealth to a Texas resident.” This is an attempt to crack New York’s shield law that protects abortion providers from prosecutions in other states. So, yeah, ditch the idea that anti-choice advocates simply wanted to return abortion to the states.

Red states are going to astonishing lengths to try to stop their own citizens from obtaining abortions elsewhere and to demand that blue states honor red states’ laws. ... Generally, states do not get to dictate what happens in other states, nor do they get to try to reach into another state and impose their own laws.

There was one shameful exception, the Fugitive Slave Act. That empowered anyone to capture the enslaved, even in states that banned slavery, and return them to their owners. The anti-abortion efforts are similar in that Texas set up a bounty hunter system. Texas could get an injunction against Carpenter, but the New York shield law means New York can’t order Carpenter to comply. The next step is for Texas to sue New York to force compliance with Texas law. That will immediately go to the Supreme Court. With a supermajority that hates abortion, New York would likely lose. And that would overturn shield laws in 18 other states and Washington, DC. And states could impose their abortion bans on states where it is legal.

Anti-choice state politicians have no intention of leaving pro-choice states alone when it comes to abortion. They’re not going to stop until they make it impossible to get abortions in blue states. This is not how federalism is supposed to work, but it’s what we’re headed toward now.

The party of “please leave me out of this”

Last Sunday the NPR program Hidden Brain discussed two political categories, a political divide, in American politics. The usual assumption is this refers to Democrats and Republicans. But not so. Host Shankar Vedantam talked to Yanna Krupnikov, a political scientist at Stony Brook University. She and fellow political scientist, John Barry Ryan, wrote the book The Other Divide: Polarization and Disengagement in American Politics. The audio is 55 minutes. There is also a transcript. Krupnikov saw a flaw in the studies that asked: Would you marry someone of the other party? If all you’re told about a person is their party affiliation you conclude it is quite important to them. So she revised the study, asking half the participants: Would you marry someone of the other party but they won’t talk about politics? Then the party didn’t matter so much. Krupnikov then explored the idea that the divide isn’t between the left and the right but between those deeply involved in politics and those who aren’t. And those who aren’t hold the majority. Some characteristics of the deeply involved: They are connected to politics for large parts of their day (somewhat true for me). They are interested in minor political developments, such as the nasty guy’s “Covfefe” tweet a while back leading to hours of debate (not true of me – and I hope this blog reflects that). They constantly talk about politics (yes, I talk a lot about politics in this blog, but not much beyond it). This is where social media comes in. In my daily life if I want to talk to someone about politics I have to search out someone. But on social media there is always someone willing to talk politics, either to reinforce my beliefs or to tell me I’m stupid. Since many people on social media – especially those who respond to political tweets – tend to be “loud,” as in ever present, one can get the impression that the number of people deeply involved in politics is “everyone,” a much larger portion of the population than they actually are. This loudness, this conflict, draws media coverage. Journalists are attracted to conflict. And that means they’re attracted to the deeply political. They’re the ones that demonstrate the narrative of polarization, who declare compromise to be a dirty word. So the deeply political people dominate news stories and dominate stories of public opinion. And they’re not the majority. The majority includes people who work more than one job, who have kids to take care of, who don’t have the time to be deeply engaged in politics. That means deep engagement includes a level of privilege. If one is deeply political one sees things that are horrifying. It is natural to want others to care about the situation as well, to warn others about the bad things coming, to get them involved. But when the majority see the deeply political they see that it seems one is supposed to be deeply political and they see what it takes to be deeply political. And they don’t want that effort and don’t have the interest. The majority also believe that all Republicans and all Democrats are all deeply political though most of them don’t talk about politics much. The majority believe they don’t know enough to be a part of the political world. They become the party of “please leave me out of this.” And they don’t vote. When confronted by partisans saying voting is so important they retreat even further. And that means politics caters to the deeply political (I can hear you saying, “well duh!”). But the voices of the other half are being ignored. We lose their ideas. We don’t address their needs. Politics is not all there is to life. Clay Jones posted a cartoon on Daily Kos inspired by the wildfires in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott comes up behind a firefighter and says, “Have you tried dousing it with racism, razor wire, and abortion bans?” In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Denise Oliver Velez posted a lot of cartoons and a half dozen are worth sharing. Nick Anderson drew one of a boxing punching bag that hangs from a ceiling, this one in the shape of an elephant head. Biden is shown whacking away at it. The head says, “I miss the old, frail Biden.” Katie Britt did the Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union speech and seems to have done an especially bad job of it (after a long series of bad Republican responses to other SOTU speeches). The setting for Britt’s speech was a kitchen. That prompted Rachel Bitecofer to post a meme of a 1950s woman saying, “We don’t need rights, we have kitchens!” Joe Heller posted a cartoon showing a man watching TV that’s showing Putin gloating over Navalny’s murder. His wife says, “So, do you still think a president should have absolute immunity?” In honor of International Women’s Day Boyce created a cartoon of women standing, looking around, and waiting. One says, “I’m not sure the man’s coming, shall we go ahead and make up the punchline ourselves?” Christine Spadafora tweeted a cartoon by Ted Littleford. A white cop and a black child are sitting at a lunch counter.

Cop: What do you want to be when you grow up? Child: Alive.

Pat Begley posted one of a child sprawled on the ground. The caption says, “If you need to know if this dead child is Israeli or Palestinian before knowing how you feel about it ... You’re doing it wrong.”

Not truly committed to address climate change

I wrote yesterday that Monday set a record for the hottest day. That record was broken on Tuesday and Wednesday tied Tuesday’s record. And, as an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reported, Thursday broke the Tuesday/Wednesday record. The new record is 17.23C (63.01F). The record was broken three times this week. Jingxing, China reached 43.3C (110F). Several places in Germany hit 37C (99F). And other hot spots around the globe.

Robert Watson, a scientist and former chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said governments and the private sector “are not truly committed to address climate change." Nor are citizens, he said. “They demand cheap energy, cheap food and do not want to pay the true cost of food and energy,” Watson said.

Joan McCarter of Kos discussed a press release from Bedminster. She tells Democrats to listen up.

If former President Donald Trump considers the results of the last session of the Supreme Court “massive wins,” then how much more proof is necessary to show he broke it? Trump packed the court and is crowing about it. “These wins were only made possible,” he says, due to the fact that he got three illegitimate, dark money-backed nominees jammed through, thanks to the Senate machinations of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Fixing that isn't stooping to his level. It’s not “politicizing” or “packing” the court. It would save the court.

Mike Luckovuch posted a cartoon to Kos it shows a classroom during “Show and Tell.” A young boy is showing off his starfish. A young girl is ready to show her marionette. And behind her is the nasty guy carrying a folder labeled “Top Secret.” I have brief notes on another cartoon. It’s on Twitter, so I can’t say who created it. The text says of the nasty guy, “He has the right to remain silent. He doesn’t have the ability.” In a pundit roundup on Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Lee Drutman of the Washington Post, saying the fix for our broken two-party system is more parties.

There’s a better way to represent the country’s diversity and offer more citizens a hopeful, engaging vision for the future: create more parties. But real, vibrant, healthy parties. Not top-down one-shot presidential candidacies, built only on the passing winds of celebrity and whims of wealthy donors. Not parties whose completely open primaries leave them vulnerable to populist outsiders. We need parties that do the hard work of candidate-vetting and gatekeeping and organizing and coalition-building that political parties are uniquely able to do; parties that organize from the bottom up, giving disaffected voters a voice, a collective identity and a long-term institution for building real power.

I agree, though for me to vote for a new party there must be ranked choice voting. Republicans are so bad my top goal is to keep them from office and the only way to do that now is by voting for Democrats. Dworkin also quoted Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, also of WaPo, discussing a Georgia teacher who read aloud from a book that includes gender identity, but is charged with violating policy banning discussions of race.

This disconnect captures something essential about state laws and directives restricting classroom discussion across the country: They seem to be imprecisely drafted to encourage censorship. That invites parents and administrators to seek to apply bans to teachers haphazardly, forcing teachers to err on the side of muzzling themselves rather than risk unintentionally crossing fuzzy lines into illegality. “Teachers are fearful,” [accused teacher Katherine] Rinderle told us in an interview. “These vague laws are chilling and result in teachers self-censoring."

In the comments Denise Oliver Velez posted cartoons. The first one is by Rob Rogers. It shows the outside the Supreme Court and above it are the words, “We hereby declare an end to racism!” The mother of a black family outside says, “Someone forgot to tell the police, the courts, the prisons, the schools, the healthcare system, the polling places, the corporations, the Republican Party...” Ruben Bolling of Kos comics posted a Tom the Dancing Bug comic with the chart showing how to curate a campus. A grid of portraits each with a caption “Admitted because we value athletics. Admitted because we value geographic diversity ... we value leadership ... legacy tradition ... cultural diversity ... first generation students ... unusual perspectives ... sexual orientation diversity ... artistic talent” and a few more. There’s a big red “X” over “Admitted because we value racial diversity” with a text block “Disallowed by order of the Supreme Court.” And beside that, “This is the only factor not allowed to be considered. Because race is so unimportant in our society.” Back on May 22 Kos of Kos discussed a Christian nationalist who regrets the results of Christian nationalism. He starts with a quote from conservative Barry Goldwater that appeared in John Dean’s 2006 book Conservatives without Conscience.

Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

Then Kos turns to an op-ed Susan Stubson wrote for the New York Times. She’s from Wyoming and the wife of Tim Stubson, former congressional Republican candidate and former member of the Wyoming House. She says Wyoming is a friendly, neighborly state (Matthew Shepard would disagree). She decries that Wyoming is a maternity desert and its hospitals are struggling (because of Wyoming Republicans). She objects to the ugly exchanges between the House Freedom Caucus and the rest of the Republicans. Kos summarized:

Stubson’s problem isn’t that she’s upset at the Christian right for swallowing up her party. She’s upset that it’s a different kind of Christian. It’s not her kind. Hers is an ideological objection. She was so fine with the previous version of Jesus Republicans that she didn’t even realize they were Jesus Republicans. ... Yesterday, we ran a story on a Tennessee county commission where the new nuts in charge have decreed that their decisions have to be “reflective of the Judeo-Christian values inherent in the nation’s founding.” This has torn this conservative community apart. “What’s happened here is the Sumner County constitutional conservative Republican group, they don’t believe in government,” said Baker Ring, a Republican who is serving his fourth term on the county commission and is not aligned with the new majority. “They’re opposed to government. But now they are the government.” That’s conservatism in a nutshell, and always has been.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted a story (alas, he didn’t include a link to the original) about Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Democrat. Evers replaced Scott Walker, who acted like a dictator, though Evers still has to deal with a Republican controlled legislature. Evers, a former public school educator used his broad partial veto authority.

Evers crafted the four-century school aid extension by striking a hyphen and a "20" from a reference to the 2024-25 school year. The increase of $325 per student is the highest single-year increase in revenue limits in state history.

In looking over my list of what’s in my browser tabs for me to write about I see a great number of items are on Twitter. Maybe I can get to them someday. Maybe they’re lost. I see one way to uncover some of them is through the Thread Reader App. It can turn a Twitter thread into a webpage not chopped up by the character limits of individual tweets. But finding a person and their threads on the app depends on whether they or a reader requests a thread be pulled into the app. Alas, Leah McElrath, the Twitter writer I had followed most consistently (as in nearly daily), isn’t on the app. The one I next most frequently follow is Michael Harriot and his threads (though not his humorous chatter) is pulled in. Here’s one of them. Harriot begins by saying, “Almost every form of popular music & art [was] created by Black Americans.” Then he noted that about a third of enslaved people practiced Islam and hid their spirituality in their music. He has a clip of three white dudes singing the spiritual “Let us break bread together on our knees.” They don’t recognize the phrase, “With my face to the rising sun,” has Muslim origins. Harriot concludes:

BUT here’s how privilege works. When white people use hip hop as a footstool to make rock or country or popular, more “accepted” music They’re still making “race music” They just don’t have to make it FOR or WITH Black people. They get to sell Black music without the Black CULTURE That’s the privilege. And it’s not fair to limit ANYONE’S artistic expression, even white artists. The problem is, that we live in a world where our unique history of race limits some people’s expression. And those limitations are what PRODUCE the art and make it emotionally relatable to the WORLD But the privilege is not that white people can make the art they want. It’s that they can do it without the limitations that actually created it.

Everyone is as rotten as them, but too hypocritical to admit it

My Sunday movie was the documentary The Revolution Generation. It was released this year. It works through the theory that American history runs in 80 year cycles, that there is a big cataclysm about 80 years and that event brings out the heroes. So, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII are each about 80 years apart. And it has been about 80 years since WWII. And Millennials are the ones coming into power. Millennials portrayed as lazy narcissists. Older generations are doing to Millennials what was done to them – told they’re not enough. A lot of negative stereotypes are thrown out there, likely because older people are afraid of the young power. But they’re organizing. They’re the voice of change. They have the new ideas. They’re living the issues. They’re demanding a seat at the table. They want action and willing to lead to get it. They’re a large generation and the most diverse. They believe who you choose to be is more important than skin color or gender or orientation. Millennials were shaped by 9/11. The message was You Are Not Safe. Part of the need for connection was satisfied through the internet, but that also brought a lot of depression as kids compared themselves to the idealized versions put forth by others. They were overmedicated. This generation has big college debt. 63% are unable to pay it. But a college education is almost required for a middle class life. 60% of them are in the gig economy and struggle to pay bills. They are becoming aware how screwed up the system is. The first election they could vote in was 2008 and that showed how powerful they could be. But then they experienced the Great Recession (which is was 80 years after the Great Depression). And they saw there was zero accountability to those who had done the damage. Pundits will say Occupy Wall Street failed. But Millennials saw it was undermined by mainstream media. Some say it was successful in explaining concept of the 99% against the 1%. In 2016 they saw Bernie Sanders was saying the things they wanted to hear. Everything they care about became political. At the Democratic convention Bernie endorsed Hillary Clinton and that felt like a betrayal. They wanted Bernie to run as an independent. But we have a two party system and Bernie knew he would have split the progressive vote. But Millennials were convinced not to care and enough sat out the election to make a difference. The problem of 3rd party candidates will be solved by ranked choice voting, where they have a chance. RCV is beginning to be used. In 2012 highly gerrymandered districts were used and in 2013 an important chunk of the Voting Rights Amendment was overturned. And protests continued. A primary example is Standing Rock. Young people were at the center of this one. Though that battle was lost it highlighted two things: It showed that corporate interests are not aligned with the public good. And it showed police were protecting the corporations. With climate change front and center the fight is between right and easy. We’re down to whether we’re willing to save our species. We have the solutions. Do we have the political will? The big event every 80 years has, so far, been a war. Institutions get torn down and rebuilt. But now a war can destroy all. Will leaders step forward to navigate through the crisis to prevent a war yet still make a sufficiently significant change to the system? A new organization, Unrig the System, has appeared. This one is a movement across politics. Its goal is to make politics more fair. I searched for that phrase online and got several hits, a Facebook page, a couple places hosting podcasts, and a conference. The supposedly Quiet Generation (the one before Boomers) actually wasn’t so quiet – they marched for the Civil Rights bills for the 1960s. One reason why they achieved that was they were after one thing – civil rights for those who aren’t white. The movement today can have a similar single focus to unrig the system. Because it is all politics. Everything is a policy decision, everything from the air we breathe to our water, to our wastes. A lot of Millennials had said they couldn’t run for elected office because they don’t have the money and who would give a kid enough money to run? But many found good hard work made up for a lack of money. And at least 30 Millennials joined Congress in 2018. One of those was Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. She ran to use politics to change policies and came up with the Green New Deal. Of course there was a Big Oil backlash. And AOC used that to highlight how the system is rigged. There is AOC and fellow members of The Squad in Congress. There is Greta Thunberg – though she is Gen Z, she is inspiring a lot of Millennials (and others) to take action. The leaders are there. The need creates the leaders and pulls out their good qualities. And this bunch is determined to have love as the focus. One of the voices of the movie said: Millennials are coming into power. We don’t need approval or permission to change our world. We only need each other. The hero of our generation is our generation. I’m sure a good part of why this movie was made was to tell older generations to get out of the way and another part was to tell the younger people to get into the fight. My little red car has been giving me concern for a while now. The cruise control stopped engaging before the pandemic, but wasn’t a big concern until my recent trip to Nashville. The air conditioner quit on the way home from that trip. And the starter has been taking more than one attempt to make the engine turn over – something that happened just after a new alternator was put in. By the time the cruise control quit the car was already 14 years old and over 190K miles. When the AC quit it had already topped 200K miles. I asked about the cost of repairs and checked an online site for the value of the car and repairs were higher. I could endure some warm August weather. And cranking the starter a few extra times wasn’t a big deal. So I made plans for seeing the Detroit Auto Show (on now) to see how soon I could get an electric car (not SUV) with sufficient range. I was becoming less sure my current car would last that long. Over the last week the number of attempts to start went from three to sixteen, then twenty. And last night I gave up after fifty. Fortunately, this was after my evening event. And there were friends waiting to see if I needed help. One friend gave me a ride home. Unfortunately, that means my car is sitting in a parking lot and not at home. It’s been a good car, lasting almost 17 years, and reasonably staying out of the repair shop during that time. Today I spent the day looking for a replacement. Online sites make that relatively easy. In addition to searching for available cars I can also check reliability data. The existing electric cars don’t have sufficient range, as I said. Also, getting a charger installed in my garage is going to take a while and I need a car now. So I’m considering a used hybrid, something that will get great gas mileage until an electric is available for me to buy. Since I worked at a car company for my career and bought the current car just before I retired, I had always bought new with the employee discount. This will be my first used car. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. The trend in new cases per day is down, but only a bit. The peaks in the last several weeks are at 2699, 2654, 2660, 2282, and 2204. The number of deaths per day is still in the 12-20 range, as it has been since mid March. Biden said the pandemic is over. But 2200 new cases per day in Michigan does not look like this is over. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, had a few quotes about the stunt DeathSantis pulled flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. The first was a tweet by Brendan Nyhan, a poli sci professor at Dartmouth. It was interesting enough that I went to the full thread. Nyhan quoted Matt Glassman:

DeSantis and Abbott shipping migrants to other states might be good politics for them, but it also feels like the triumph of s---posting as a substitute for serious policy. It's not a viable immigration strategy. But in a world of s---posting, it might seem downright innovative.

Nyhan added:

The need to be seen publicly owning libs is so profound for ambitious pols in the GOP that we're seeing an escalatory dynamic in which the ante keeps being raised - dumping migrants in blue states, performatively arresting people who were told they could vote, etc. I worry that debt ceiling hostage-taking could go even further in the next Congress under these circumstances.

Nyhan quoted Greg Greene:

Here’s the deal: with no overhyped caravans at the border and with Republicans having lost the August news cycle, GOP officials and media want to knock Dems off-message by staging a caravan from within. It’s bait. Dem officials should exercise restraint.

Nyhan added the stunt is...

Intentionally creating a situation where there would be no support or resources for highly vulnerable people.

Back to the roundup, Dworkin quoted a tweet by Bob Smietana: “Southern governors sending migrants north face a crisis of faith.” That included a link to Religion News with the tag, “It’s getting harder for a politician to adhere to Christian morals and get elected president.” In the comments Denise Oliver Velez included a few political cartoons. Matt Wuerker has one titled Air Desantis which shows posters showing free flights to fabulous Martha’s Vineyard and migrants scrambling to the ladders over the US border wall. And DeathSantis said he wants to discourage migrants. Matt Davies of Newsday has a cartoon of migrants coming off the plane and being asked “From which cruel & despotic regimes are you fleeing?” A migrant replies, “Texas and Florida.” Dworkin included a tweet by Jenny Hunter about the recently averted rail strike:

I wrote with ⁦@TerriGerstein⁩ for ⁦@Slate⁩ about how railroad companies just dangled the economy over a balcony because they didn’t want to adopt humane leave and attendance policies.

In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev of Kos quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times:

The conceit of this dehumanizing bit of political theater was that the liberal denizens of Martha’s Vineyard would reject the migrants out of hypocrisy, thus proving that Democrats aren’t actually interested in welcoming immigrants into their communities. To DeSantis and his amen corner, asylum seekers are disposable, and they believe that liberals will want to dispose of them too. What happened, instead, was that residents of Martha’s Vineyard rallied to provide food, shelter, clothing and services. The asylum seekers are now on their way to Cape Cod, to receive further assistance. The stunt failed to make its intended point.

It’s a case of a supremacist seeing the world only in terms of maintaining the social hierarchy and being surprised that others don’t see the world that way. Dartagnan of the Kos community started a post by asking wouldn't it be nice to know when your child was about to throw a temper tantrum?

Just imagine if you knew the tantrum was coming ahead of time, though. You could sit back and relax, even count down, 3-2-1, and when the whining started, you’d be totally prepared for it. Imagine you’re in the middle of doing something very important: you could look up at the clock and say to yourself, Okay, have to take a break now, tantrum coming up in a minute. Multiple Republican candidates for office have given us all a preview of their plans should they lose their elections on Nov. 8: They all intend to bawl “fraud,” as loudly and vehemently as their little lungs can manage. Their reasons are as murky as their (nonexistent) policy positions but they all—like the babies they’re emulating so well—seem to boil down to the fact that someone isn’t paying enough attention to them right now.

Dartagnan then discussed a report by Reid Epstein in the NYT listing a dozen Republican candidates for governor and senator who have already said they will cry fraud if the election doesn’t go their way. Which means they aren’t fit to be candidates and don’t deserve your vote. Though thanks for letting us know about your planned tantrum. In a Ukraine update posted last Saturday Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that as a “war correspondent” he’s got a really cushy job. He can work from his desk in America and report based on what he reads online. He’s thankful for his job for a couple reasons right now. First, last Friday was the Day of Remembrance of Ukrainian Journalists. Since the start of Russia’s invasion 39 have been killed. Second, now that Russia has pulled out of Izyum we saw, as we did when they pulled out of Bucha and many other cities and villages, Russia left behind war crimes, a fresh set of atrocities. In Izyum’s case it is 445 people buried in the forest. There is evidence of torture. Putin may think of them as statistics or pieces on a chessboard, but they were real people who did such things as celebrate Christmas last year. Weoropar tweeted a discussion of Russia’s definition of “hypocrisy” and “normal.”

The way they see it, a westerner, who is appalled by looting - would himself loot, if given the chance. Moreover, the Russians see themselves better than the westerners, since they at least openly admit they're rotten. That is one of the reasons behind Russian pride in atrocities. Being better than the West is another major part of Russian Worldview TM, but I'm not going into that topic right now. The key thought of this rant - the Russians want to prove to the rest of the world that everyone is as rotten as them, but too hypocritical to admit it.

Another case of supremacists not seeing that some people are not worried about their place in the hierarchy. On Tuesday evening Sumner reported on the news that Putin was about to give a big speech. But his appearance kept getting delayed. And eventually moved to Wednesday morning. But some people seem to know what is coming and it doesn’t sound good. Oligarchs seem aware of what it is because the Russian stock market dropped 9%. And men ages 18-64 are scrambling for airline tickets to anywhere out of the country and Googling how to escape Russia. In a Wednesday morning update Sumner reported Putin did give his big speech. Russian TV reserved three hours. Putin talked for ten minutes. Putin did the usual bit of blaming the west and repeating his goal of ridding the world of the “Nazi” regime in Kyiv. He lied about how well the invasion is going for Russia. He declared there will be elections in Russian held territory in Ukraine so they can be annexed. That way liberating them can be seen as an attack on Russia. Of course, most of the citizens in these areas will vote for “don’t kill me.” And the big news: He will be mobilizing 300,000 military reservists (the actual definition of “reservist” is whatever Putin and his goons decide it means). Sumner wrote, quoting numbers Putin spouted:

So … Russia has lost fewer than 6,000. Has killed 100,000. Killed 7,000 Ukrainians in the last three weeks. And is now calling up 300,000 to fight the half of the Ukrainian military that remains? It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s Russia.

Sumner noted these 300,000 troops won’t make Russia’s inability to do logistics any better. They won’t compensate for the weapons Russia no longer has the resources to make. And many of these new “contract” soldiers vow to refuse to fight or shoot their commanders. In the meantime flights leaving Russia have sold out and the airlines were ordered to not sell tickets to men age 18-65. And the traffic jam at the Finland border is now 35Km long – Finland may soon have a larger Russian army than Russia. And at the United Nations Biden said, “This war is about extinguishing Ukraine's right to exist as a state — plain and simple — and Ukraine's right to exist as a people. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should make your blood run cold.”

It’s doing what it is designed to do

I listen to the NPR show Freakenomics, hosted by Stephen Dubner. when I go out on Sunday to pick up lunch from a restaurant. Yesterday the episode was titled America’s Hidden Duopoly. This episode originally aired in 2018. A duopoly is when two companies take up most of a particular market. An example is Coke and Pepsi. The rivalry between the two is beneficial to both. The rivalry advertises both and is fairly good (or good enough) to prevent smaller companies from getting very big (and when they do one of the behemoths will usually try to buy them out). There is another duopoly that we don’t usually think of as one because we don’t see them as part of an industry or market. This duopoly is Democrats and Republicans in their control of American government. As I was listening to this (and kept listening once I got home) I remember a comment I said to my niece last summer: I am against everything the Republican Party stands for. Their ideals and goals are totally opposite of mine. They are my enemy. But that doesn’t mean I consider Democrats to be my friends. I have issues with them too. The show had a series of clips of various politicians saying Washington is broken. But what if that is a line and Washington is working as intended? Katherine Gehl had been the CEO of Gehl Foods in Wisconsin. To get advice on how to improve her company she turned to Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School, working with strategy and competitiveness. In 2007 Gehl joined Obama’s national finance committee. Then she joined the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which gave her an idea of life in Washington. She didn’t like what she saw. Gehl said:

It became really clear to me that this fight was not about solving problems for the American people — this fight was about one party beating the other party, and that the parties were more committed to that than to actually solving problems or creating opportunities. Eventually, I understood that it didn’t matter who we elected. It didn’t matter the quality of the candidates. And so, once it became clear to me that it was a systems problem, I switched from investing my time in searching for the next great candidate and turned an eye to the fundamental root cause structures in the political system that pretty much guarantee that as voters we are perpetually dissatisfied.

She turned to non-partisan efforts, only to find people wouldn't donate to non-partisan causes. They were too used to the two-party lens. Gehl and Porter began to realize the business issues they talked about also applied to our political situation. Politics was an industry. They wrote up their ideas for the Harvard B School. The key findings had this sentence in bright red: “The political system isn’t broken. It’s doing what it is designed to do.” The two parties divided up the industry, including media, consultants, and lobbyists. Also policies, think tanks, voter data, and talent. When an industry starts doing things for itself instead of its customers (the citizens) an upstart can usually come in, based on the strength of its customer support. But the two parties have colluded over time to create rules and practices that keep out the competition. A new party can’t get a campaign manager or voter analytics, Can’t get the attention of the media. A new party faces partisan primaries, gerrymandered districts, and winner-take-all elections. One result is they don’t compete for voters. They don’t work to attract the middle. If those in the middle are unhappy, they have no alternative. The election is based on each party portraying themselves as much less hated than the other. The two parties maximize the benefit to their institutions but don’t actually serve the public interest. Solutions… Start with a non-partisan primary. All candidates, no matter the party, are voted on by all the people. The top four candidates go on to the general. Second, in the general, go to ranked-choice voting. The voters rank the four candidates first, second, etc. The first choices are counted. If no candidate gets 50% the bottom candidate is removed and of those who listed him first, take their second choice and add to the others. Repeat until one gets 50%. That eliminates “wasting” votes on third-party candidates. Third, get rid of gerrymandering. Fourth, in Congress and state legislatures get rid of the enormous power the controlling party can wield. Fifth, restructure money in politics to boost the power of small donors, such as the government matching small donations. Of course, the duopoly will fight these reforms with all they have. I see a bit better why Democrats aren’t always my friends. Yes, I see much of this no longer applies as Republicans work to make America into a one party state.

What’s this about being paid too much?

I’ve got dozens of browser tabs with articles I want to share with you. I think I’m not going to get to very many of them. Today I’ll mention a few and let you read the original articles on your own.

Mark Anderson of Daily Kos tackles the GOP talking points against unions. They’re corrupt, they’re not needed, they have idiotic rules, members of public employee unions get paid too much.

You mean like…

* Idiotic rules such as consistently not paying employees for overtime? This is wage theft.

* A school board superintendent of a small district who manipulated the board to pay him $600K a year and also has been charged with a dozen counts of corruption? For every case of union corruption there are a dozen cases of business corruption.

* Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Expedia, who was paid $94.6 million?

Yeah, unions are needed.



The *New York Times* has an article about rich people who make sure their staff don’t know how much they spend on such things as bread (as in $6 a loaf). I didn’t read the article, but did read a series of tweets from Melissa McEwan of Shaeksville about the article. The reason why the grocery bill is hidden is the rich don’t believe the staff “deserve” a higher wage. Yet, they’re aware the staff is being underpaid – at least in comparison to the grocery bill.



Egberto Willies of Daily Kos, in the wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, ponders political malpractice. A drunk driver who kills someone, an engineer whose bridge collapses, a doctor who makes a mistake and a patient dies – none did it on purpose.

Yet every single one of these events is prosecutable as some sort of negligence, and potentially manslaughter or even murder.

One could argue that political malpractice kills many more people. However, there is a difference: The politicians effecting political malpractice do so knowingly. If there are solutions that would have reasonably saved lives but said solutions were not implemented because of corruption or because of dubious rationales, they deserve prosecution—just like any citizen who unwittingly harmed someone.
…
The intent is not to criminalize politics: It is to ensure that politics aren't criminal.

Two million voters

The nasty guy has approved the Keystone Pipeline, a project his predecessor blocked. He said a lot of things to his base during the announcement. But we know how good he is at not telling the truth.

He trumpeted the pipeline will create 28,000 jobs. The Washington Post says that is more like 10,400 jobs – and they’re seasonal and around only long enough to actually build the pipeline. Permanent full time jobs: 35. And no, I didn’t forget some zeros.

It will, of course, be made with American steel! Um, no. Well, maybe 60% of the steel will be American. The other 40% will be … Russian.

But the pipeline promotes energy independence! It is safer than transporting all that oil by train! Safety and independence would be even better if we promoted energy sources other than fossil fuel. In addition, this is the dirtiest oil and pipelines leak three times more oil than train accidents.



Washington Post headline: “Only 3% of Trump Voters Regret Their Vote.”

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville digs a bit deeper. We can’t tell how that compares to previous presidents because the question hasn’t been asked before. She also says it is misleading. Only? Stating percentage to keep the number low? She did a bit of math: 3% of his voters is 1,889,389. So she has a replacement headline:

Almost Two Million Trump Voters Regret Their Vote Only 60 Days into His Presidency.

And my version of the headline:

The two million people who regret voting for Trump would have made a difference in who won the election.

I’ve been talking about ranking a lot lately. Ranking comes with privilege – those higher in rank get some benefit or privilege from their rank. That can be subtle, such as white men usually don’t have to worry about safety (or they significantly increase the oppression if they are ever made to feel unsafe). But women and people of color have to think about safety all the time – the source of that threat being white men.

McEwan explores another facet of that privilege. Politics works for white men – at least the white men who voted for the nasty guy think it should. The privileged don’t actually have to do anything. Well, maybe vote. Occasionally. Of course, when things don’t get handed to them right now, they get upset. And because of their privilege they believe they aren’t supposed to get upset.

The rest of us know differently. We know we have to show up. We know we have to understand the political process and have to make sacrifices of time, energy, and money. And we know it is going to be a long hard slog.

Last fall we had a candidate who understood the long hard slog. And one who still doesn’t. And because he wants things to happen fast his policies have been a disaster. Fast is in opposition to good policy and good governance.



Younger workers, such as Millennials, are used to the gig economy. Many don’t have full-time jobs with good pay and benefits. They scrounge for jobs, many of which are part-time or are of short duration. Jia Tolentino, writing for The New Yorker, notes that companies that push this part-time work now praise it to the point of praising working yourself to death.

At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy’s rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear.

Tolentino mentions stories of dedicated workers who walk up to twelve miles to work. One such story splashed across the pages of the Detroit Free Press. But these stories don’t delve into the shameful situation that the worker is paid so poorly he can’t afford the commute or a residence near the suburban job.

Equality is a family value

While my dad was in the rehab center and when my conservative brother came to visit I thought it prudent to borrow Dad's copy of the March/April/May issue of Washington Monthly to get it out of the house (hmm... named "Monthly" and printed quarterly). The reason: the cover article is Can Gay Wedlock Break Political Gridlock? The illustration showed a happy donkey and elephant in a red convertible with a "Just Married" sign on the back and heading into the sunset. Even my 16 year old niece had learned there are some issues we simply do not discuss with this brother.

Of course, with a title like that I just had to actually read it. And then I read a couple more articles.

This cover article is by David Blankenhorn, William Galston, Jonathan Rauch, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. I've read stuff by Rauch before and was quite impressed with his understanding. The article in the magazine is six good-sized pages, so my summary will be leaving lots of it out.

With same-sex marriage soon legal nationally the political landscape for marriage has changed. For about 50 years both parties have lamented the decline of marriage. A big part of that has been marriage becoming a class-based institution. Middle and upper class people get married, poor people don't. A big chunk of the article goes into this in detail. This marriage gap harms children because it deprives them of a parent's support. It harms adults by reducing their chance of economic success. It harms communities because the young aren't guided into stable relationships. It harms the country by fueling inequality.

Lots of research went into the importance of families during the 1970s and '80s along with much discussion of what to do about it. But the debate was sidetracked in the 1990s by women's equality and gay rights. The discussion of marriage became a pitched battle with equality on one side and family values on the other. Pro-equality meant anti-family (sound familiar?).

But the ideas have shifted. Progressives have realized that family structure and social justice are related. Conservatives are beginning to realize that a man's marriageability is dependent on his prospects in the job market. Gays and lesbians have realized that they have a stake in the health of marriages. That has prompted progressives to see that social equality of both gays and the poor is impossible without access to marriage. Conservatives are realizing that antagonism to same-sex marriage turns off the younger voters and it is better to support gay and lesbian couples.

The authors make some recommendations. Make a public argument for marriage opportunity; explain why it is important. Increase marriageability by helping the poor join the workforce and handle life in the middle class and by providing community support of marriage. Change public policy, such things as not reducing benefits upon marriage, offer counseling to those considering divorce, support public education of life and financial literacy, and reduce incarceration which removes men from families. Include sexual minorities in all that family support. Do research on gay families, including why marriage matters and cultural factors that support marriage.

Equality is becoming a family value.



Another article in Washington Monthly that caught my attention is A New Agenda for Political Reform by Lee Drutman and Steven Teles. Most of this nine page article describes how Congress made itself stupid by cutting a big chunk of its support staff. That included staff that knew institutional history, how things got done, and could offer independent analysis of what was in various bills, and guide legislators in writing bills. Only in America are the ranks of advisers to lawmakers filled with twentysomethings, even if they are bright and eager. That means Congress must rely on industry lobbyists to explain what is going on in the world, and to write the bills that Congress passes. Naturally, those lobbyists are highly biased. I knew the situation was bad, but I didn't know how bad and precisely why.

All through the article I was thinking this is the situation the Congressional corporate masters want. How would we convince Congress to defy their masters? What reasons could we give? Thankfully, the authors have some, though they know it will be an uphill fight.

The Tea Party may realize that a stronger Congressional staff is necessary to effectively oversee the rest of government and root out waste. The GOP may realize that while they wail about executive overreach they are cutting their power to do anything about it. Both parties complain about out-of-control and do-nothing bureaucrats and may soon realize they need staff to identify and fix abuses. The cost for an expert support staff? Less than the typical Pentagon project overrun, which legislative oversight, made possible by an expert support staff, could reduce.



A third article has only a morsel to share. The title is How Mike Huckabee Became the New Sarah Palin, and is by Ed Kilgore. In 2008 Palin turned resentment of the "liberal elites" who supposedly run the country into victimization, self-pity, and vengeance. Democrats didn't just do bad things, they looked down their noses a "real" Americans. Since then many Republicans, especially Huckabee through his new book, have adopted Palin's line of attack.

The Christian Right, Tea Party members, and conservatives in general have added this general indictment of the liberal elites and their underclass clients:

an unpatriotic determination to undermine rights and overthrow governing norms set down eternally by the Founders of this exceptional nation under the direct inspiration of Almighty God. So liberals were not only mocking the religion and culture of good white middle-class folk, and stealing their hard-earned money (and richly earned government benefits) to buy votes from the lower orders – they were also spitting on the foundational principles of America and defying God.

Yeah, that's what we're facing.

Legislature v. voters

Back on Sept. 5, in response to my post about voter-ID laws enacted by the GOP, my friend and debate partner wrote about politics in Michigan's GOP controlled legislature:

Whether or not Republicans retain their power, this year I expect a tragic post-election legislative session in regard to voting rights; women's rights; access to health insurance; everyone's rights to sue over anything controversial; public funding and tax fairness; county, municipal and township funding and services; public education; public employees' rights; privatization; environmental exploitation (including a corporate grab for Michigan's fresh water riches); prisoners' rights and opportunities. A disaster for all minorities (including LGBT's), the middle class and the less fortunate of all kinds. If Republican power is then lame-duck, as we may still hope, their legislative onslaught will be as deep as its masters can conceive -- it will be the GOP's last gasp. If Republicans retain power, they will press their agenda strongly. Public contempt and electoral remorse will make no difference. We should fear the last six weeks of 2014; [Gov.] Snyder will sign any bill he receives, whether or not he remains in power.

Today I heard news from Michigan Radio indicating my friend's prediction is likely correct.

After the last election, in which Obama took all 16 of Michigan's Electoral votes, the GOP in the state started pushing the idea that Electoral College votes should be decided by Congressional District, rather than winner-take-all at the state level. It sounds fair, but the GOP has so gerrymandered the state that in 2012 Romney would have gotten at least 3 more votes than a proportional split of all votes cast for president would have given him (and, of course, 9 more votes than Romney got under winner-take-all).

Michigan Radio reports that idea is again circulating around Lansing. Again, Dems are crying foul. Various news reports also list other issues that will be deferred to the lame-duck session. Alas, this bit is news and not a story, so it isn't posted to the Michigan Radio website.

My friend has solid history on which to base his prediction. In the last lame-duck session the GOP pushed through a slew of new laws, including the (misnamed) Right-to-Work law. Once the election is over with the GOP is beholden to nobody but their corporate masters. So many of them are term-limited that they won't be back for another term to face voters again. These are headed to lobbying positions supplied by those corporate masters. Many other legislators trust their voters like enough of their shenanigans they'll forget the worst stuff.

So, how do we go about getting rid of the lame-duck session? How do we prevent the legislature from meeting in November and December? Or how do we immediately put the newly elected politicians into office? We face a situation in which the legislature has become completely separated from voters.

Lesbian judge in Detroit

Judith Levy has been confirmed to be a judge in a US District Court. This notable for three reasons. She is an out lesbian, the Senate confirmation vote was 97-0, and she is appointed to the same courthouse in Detroit that just heard the gay marriage and adoption case.



David Mixner asks us to appreciate the courage of Jack Conway. He is the Attorney General of Kentucky and has declined to defend the ban on same-sex marriage there. This could end Conway's political career, at least in Kentucky. So, yes, a rare breed -- a politician with courage.



Now that lots of photos are uploaded into photo-sharing sites and are tagged (sometimes with the street address) it is possible to create maps of the most photographed locations. The top sites in North America are NYC (most photographed in the world), Niagara, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Las Vegas, Boston, Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa. But Europe as a whole is much more photogenic than America. If you really wanted to you could zoom in on Michigan where Detroit leads the state but is 1059th overall.


The previous post, published just a few moments ago, is post 2500 for this blog. I managed that in 6 and 1/3 years.

The wrong side of a political game

A couple months ago the New Jersey Supremes ruled that same-sex couples must have marriage on the same terms as straight couples. Gov. Chris Christie decided not to pursue an appeal.

The NJ Democrats are annoyed. Though Christie vetoed the marriage equality bill, because he didn't appeal the Supremes' decision he came out smelling like a rose. He can tell Fundies he vetoed the original bill and is on their side and he can let gays assume he's changed his mind.

So, the state Dems want to pass a law affirming marriage equality, because you see the Supremes could change their minds. I'm puzzled why, if they changed their minds, they can't simply strike down the new law. Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin sees the whole thing as a political game -- with us as the losers.

First problem: The Dems want to force Christie to sign the bill and annoy the Fundies, or veto the bill and annoy gays. But there is a third possibility -- Christie could ignore it for 45 days, at which point it becomes law without his signature. His rosy smell remains intact.

Second problem: The ruling by the Supremes does not have a religious exemption clause. The bill does. It may have a hard time passing if it didn't. And even though there are fewer exemptions granted than in the bill Christie vetoed, that there are any exemptions implies religion trumps gay rights and gay marriages are still a teensy bit less than straight marriages. This is why Garden State Equality opposes the bill.

So Dems are looking for ammo to use against Christie, should he run for president. But it is an iffy scenario and will be at our expense.

The people who matter

Essayist Terrence Heath has a three-part look at Obama's Inaugural speech. The first part reviews the GOP reaction to the speech. And that is they were quite miffed that Obama didn't extend an olive branch, saying I know we'll have to work together over the next four years. Obama had tried that in his first term. It didn't work. Why do that again? This time the speech was confrontational.

In part 2, Heath reviews a bit of Obama's record. The prez. managed quite a list of accomplishments even with an obstructionist GOP that vowed to make him a one-term president. And in spite of a sluggish economy, Obama put together a diverse coalition -- even 40% of whites voted for him (and a different kind of stat: 80% of Romney voters were white) -- and beat Romney. So in the Inaugural address, Obama spoke to his coalition. The GOP hasn't yet figured out how not to be the party of old straight white guys.

The third part looks at something Heath noticed about Washington (he lives in the suburbs). There are people who matter and people who don't. The GOP was annoyed because Obama addressed the people who matter -- and it wasn't them.